Brian Eno is MORE DARK THAN SHARK

INTERVIEWS, REVIEWS & RELATED ARTICLES

Mojo FEBRUARY 2015 - by David Sheppard

BRIAN ENO: NERVE NET

His '90s oeuvre sees light of day again - The Shutov Assembly, Neroli and The Drop also reissued.

Odd tracks appearing on box sets notwithstanding, for Enophiles, 1991's My Squelchy Life is a holy grail. Set to be unveiled in September that year, it fell foul of Warners' schedule and was rescheduled for the following February, prompting Eno to withdraw it in favour of an album of fresher material, Nerve Net. Exhumed here as a bonus disc, My Squelchy Life's unsettling blend of claustrophobic ambiences, oblique keyboard stabs and fragmentary, often heavily processed vocals is splendidly jittery, while the hymn-like Some Words might have slotted happily onto Another Green World. Nerve Net itself, partially built on My Squelchy Life superstructures, finds Eno in more playful mood - the needle-sharp techno-funk of opener Fractal Zoom ceding to Wire Shock's tropical shimmer, the lugubrious ersatz sax of Pierre In Mist and the oddly scuttling Juju Space Jazz, whose title is a neat descriptor of the entire enterprise.